The Sustainable Classroom

The Sustainable Classroom - a hallmark of TerraVita – introduces visionary producers, chefs, journalists and cookbook authors for culinary workshops, food and beverage tastings, demonstrations and panel discussions which range in topic, but share a focus on sustainability. Treat yourself to this all-day pass and attend up to four 1-hour and 20 minute classes, which take place Friday, October 19, from 9 am until 3:30 pm. Classes will take place in Southern Season's Cooking School.

Lunch will not be served, but there will be a 40 minute break between the second and third sessions. You may bring something light to enjoy or go downstairs to the to pick up a quick bite!

Under Pressure: Cooking with the Instant Pot

9 am - Southern Season Cooking School

It’s not an overstatement to say that the Instant Pot has transformed home cooks’ lives. Its loyal fan base – they verge on obsessed – can’t say enough about the multi-purpose, programmable pressure cooker’s convenience, dependability and safety, or the ease with which it cooks rice, makes yogurt or whips up a comforting one-pot meal. For this reason, the Instant Pot has become the iPhone of pressure cookers in a very short amount of time. “I often refer to my Instant Pot as a time machine because it lets me speed up and slow down cooking to suit my time frame,” says author Sheri Castle, who has a new Instant Pot cookbook and is one of our class participants. In this class, fully grasp the breadth of your Instant Pot by learning to make an entire meal using it, from the appetizer course to the sweet ending of dessert. This appliance’s capabilities go well beyond grains, beans and stews. Talk about instant gratification. There’s power in this pot.

The Chef & The Farmer - Couples Who Cook & Farm Together

10:45 am - Southern Season Cooking School

Farming and cooking. These professions complement each other in so many ways. With a shared appreciation for the finest ingredients and the land that provides them, local chefs and their neighboring farmers rely on each other to stay in business. And they can relate to each other, as both careers require grueling hours, exhausting physical labor and the capacity to take the literal and metaphorical heat.

So what happens when a chef and a farmer end up together? How can a couple survive and grow in the midst of two extremely demanding jobs? And how does their personal bond further each person’s understanding of the partner’s respective industry and its daily challenges?

We’ll hear from several chef/farmer duos – and enjoy a taste of what they cook up when they marry the undeniable forces of farm-fresh ingredients, serious culinary chops and a shared passion for putting their best plate forward.

Confirmed Participants:

- Keia Mastrianni from Milk Glass Pie

- Jamie Swofford from The Chef's Farmer and Old North Shrub

Food Justice & Social Justice: How Our Foodways are Intrinsically Linked to the Causes of Our Time

12:45 pm - Southern Season Cooking School

What social justice issues matter most to you? Access to health care and a living wage? Women’s equality? Protecting the environment? Racial justice? Immigration rights? Now, consider how each of these issues play into our food system.

With food being so central to the human experience, restaurants, farms and kitchens are important places to start if we want to do our part to create a better world. Our panel will provide perspective on food’s role in the history of our country’s social justice movements (consider, after all, the lunch counters of the 1960s, pivotal to the Civil Rights struggle) and challenge us to consider ways we can make a difference through our interactions within the food system.

Toni Tipton-Martin – activist and award-winning author of The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks – teams up with Joy Crump – activist and co-owner/ executive chef of FOODĒ and Mercantile in northern Virginia – to lead a discussion on the intersection of food justice and social justice. The causes at the forefront of our national debate – a living wage, women’s rights, immigration reform, affordable health care, racial equality and more – are all intricately connected to our foodways.

Beverages That Heal - Morning, Noon & Night

2:20 pm - Southern Season Cooking School

When you think of beverages that are essential to your health, water immediately springs to mind. But others bring extraordinary health benefits, from relieving minor discomforts like indigestion and fighting off major diseases like cancer to boosting your energy and metabolism. A perfect day’s menu of hydration might involve an immune-activating elderberry latte in the morning, an infection-fighting coconut kefir for lunch, a digestive-friendly drinking vinegar with healing herbs in the mid-afternoon, and a calming and anti-inflammatory chamomile and turmeric tea before bed. You could even pack a probiotics punch by adding a kombucha cocktail night cap to the mix. In this class, we’ll explore shrubs for every taste and season, various healing herbs and wellness elixirs, and the sustainability of this everything-old-is-new-again approach to beverages. Let’s raise a glass to our health!